Many companies and other organizations possess phone systems which direct callers to agents employed by the business. The voice calls can originate from either the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or the Internet. When calls are placed, the callers are typically queued up in the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) as in a Private Branch Xchange (PBX) where they hear music or important announcements about the company the callers dialed. An Automatic Call Distributor (ACD), which is part of the CPE, may be programmed to inform callers of their position and the average wait time when the callers enter the queue. However, many systems will not provide updates to the caller with regards to the status of the position or the wait time in the queue thereafter.
An ACD is a software package that runs on a PBX or central office switch. It is programmable via either the Call Management System (CMS) or the touch of the keypad of a telephone set, i.e. a supervisor can issue commands to alter characteristics of splits in the ACD. Agents may log into their assigned splits based on the skills. They manage their own states by using the touchtone pad of the telephone sets.
The supervisor may also have access to the CMS which is an adjunct of the PBX. This adjunct system allows the supervisor to set up a profile of an agent as belonging to a particular split based on the skills of the agent. For example, the supervisor can set up a default profile for an agent to always log into a Spanish-speaking split. The supervisor, using the CMS, can monitor the performance of the ACD in terms of the call volume to the different splits, average time for the splits to answer an incoming call, etc.